


Harry J. Crowley

by Anna_Hopkins



Series: October, 2019 [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aziraphale and Crowley specifically, Crack, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Hogwarts First Year, Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Magically Powerful Harry Potter, OP Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-01-16 01:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: (Alternate title:This (Fic)'s Already Got Better)In what would later be termed a nearly miraculous coincidence...Harry saw a figure with long, red hair feeding the ducks through his blurry glasses and thought -- "Mum?"(Or: Crowley decided to try growing his hair out again for a few months of 1986, on a whim, and this happened.)





	1. Chapter 1

In what would later be termed a nearly miraculous coincidence, one summer day in 1986, a perfectly ordinary married couple decided to drive into London for the day with their son -- which by necessity meant bringing their nephew, as well, a messy-haired boy in oversized, baggy clothes and ill-fitting glasses. He was decidedly less-than-normal, however, so instead of having to mind him all day, and get odd looks from the Londoners, they dropped him off in St. James's Park and told him to be there when they returned at four.

(It was about nine-thirty, at present.)

Leaving a twenty-pound note in her nephew's pocket, one Petunia Dursley sternly warned him not to cause any trouble before turning on her heel and returning to the car. The boy nodded vigorously, blinking in the cloud of dust the tyres left behind, and the minute the Dursleys were out of his sight, was off at a run, into the park with wide, excited eyes.

He'd never been let outside for such a long time -- particularly not in a park this large, with so much open space! There were people around, yes, but none of them were children he recognized; which meant they didn't chase after him, and hardly looked at him as he roamed the tree-spotted expanse of green, down the paths and around to the lake in the middle of the park.

It was here, about three in the afternoon and just when the boy was getting hungry (he'd forgotten about the twenty-pound note in his pocket, and frankly couldn't be expected to know what to do with it anyway), that the aforementioned coincidence took place: down by the water, ducks were gathering around a figure with long, red hair, and Harry, having never seen anyone with long, red hair except for one person, made a very understandable mistake.

He ran over to the figure, squinting through the blurry lenses of his glasses, and exclaimed, "Mum?"

It was the summer of 1986, and one fallen angel had gone over several fashion magazines recently and thought, _ is long hair making a comeback? _ He was the sort of demon that thrived on the latest styles, you see, and between that and the amusing novelty of _ having _ long hair again, he gave it a try.

He'd thought someone might mistake him for a woman, sure, they were terribly sexist in these times -- ah, sexism, one of his more effective inventions -- and had been entirely prepared to spout insults and laugh in the face of the first person to say so. So when he was feeding the ducks and heard a tentative 'mum?' from behind him, he turned around, about to laugh in the face of whoever had just asked that.

Then he paused, words lost in transit, and blinked several times behind his sunglasses.

Crowley of all people would know that humans hadn't worn rags in this part of the world (outside of _ haute couture _) in more than fifty years, if not longer. The boy who had mistaken him for someone else, and was currently standing there frozen in embarrassment, was not only wearing rags, he looked like he'd never seen the inside of a barbershop.

Instead of mockery, the words that came out of his mouth were, "Not quite. Anthony J Crowley is the name."

"Oh!" The boy blinked owlishly behind glasses of his own, which were not tinted, and were indeed nearly as thick as the hastily-taped-together frames. "I'm Harry," he replied, "Erm. Nice to meet you?"

"Harry's" stomach chose that moment to rumble very loudly. When the boy looked as though he meant to _ apologize, _Crowley had quite frankly had enough. A minor miracle had a full lunch spread laid out on a picnic blanket behind him. "I was just about to have a snack," the demon lied. "Join me, hm?"

It's tremendously easy to tempt a starving man to a spot of lunch. Moreso if said man is a child. Their impromptu picnic gave Crowley enough time to coax information out of Harry, in a roundabout way, as to just who had left him in the park in the first place. Harry was, as to be expected, not particularly forthcoming with answers to those questions, and seemed generally nervous to mention his aunt and uncle at all.

The reedy, horse-faced woman that approached them at half-past four was unmistakably Harry's aunt, however, from both her appearance and the hostility she radiated like a beacon to Crowley's senses. Even if he hadn't known those things, the way Harry leapt up from the picnic blanket and winced at the bruising grip she took on his arm would have told him everything he needed to know. "So sorry he's interrupted your lunch, sir," the woman (Crowley was not about to commit her name to memory) said, dragging Harry along. "He's always getting into trouble, you see --"

"Actually," Crowley cut her off, straightening up to his full height, "Harry has been, dare I say, a right little _ angel _ this entire time, and," he sauntered over to where the woman had frozen in her tracks, "he doesn't deserve the hell you've been giving him. So let go of his arm immediately --" the hand on the boy's arm abruptly dropped it as if burnt -- "and kindly _ forget you ever had him in the first place, _ as he's coming with _ me _ instead." He held his hand up in the woman's enraged and confused face and snapped his fingers; she stumbled back, away from both of them, and blinked, offering a polite smile as though to a pair of strangers, walking away without another word.

This finished, Crowley turned to Harry, who was staring at him with eyes like dinner plates and fairly sparkling with admiration. "Wicked," he breathed.

Crowley smirked. "Why, thank you. I try to be." He snapped his fingers again, and Harry's rags were switched out with a sized-to-fit version of one of his suits. The boy jumped in surprise, staring down at the clothes, and beamed up at him again.

A few more miracles had the picnic cleaned up and the Bentley illegally parked at the end of the walkway. "Come on, kid. Let's go home, shall we?"

Aziraphale was surprised, to say the least, by the arrival of the Bentley in front of A.Z. Fell Books several hours ahead of their usual Ritz schedule -- and outright shocked by the emergence of not one, but _ two _ Crowleys from its black interior. That is to say, there was one Crowley, the usual one, and one child dressed in one of Crowley's outfits: the latter of whom beamed up at him and stood nervously at the demon's side whilst Crowley related the circumstances involving his stealing the child away from his relatives.

("Crowley, dear," he'd asked, "have you _ stolen _young Harry from someone?"

"Well...technically," the demon had hedged, "but he's better off, you see, never seeing those awful humans again --")

Between the explanation of the circumstances and Harry's own confessed desire to remain with 'Mr. Crowley', it was plain that they would be keeping him. Harry moved into the spare room in Crowley's flat, where there was the most space for him, and over the next few years, proved to be one of the more interesting humans that either angel or demon had had the opportunity to encounter, if they did say so themselves.

To begin with, not long after that first afternoon, Harry had watched Crowley snap his fingers to conjure a hat and promptly mimicked the motion and gotten the same result; "I've, erm, done something like it before," he'd admitted, worrying the brim of the hat in his hands as though he expected to be in trouble for it. When their reaction was _ pride _ and _ encouragement _, however, he'd taken to the miracles like a fish to water -- and that had been that, really.

(Later, when Aziraphale remembered that wizards existed, something he ought to remember better given how often he visited their part of London for magical reagents, he connected the dots; but knowing what he did about the limits of human magic that Harry did not seem to have, he said nothing of it to Harry. Crowley, upon learning of Harry's supposed magic, persisted in believing that Harry can do anything they could do, and Harry, not knowing he isn't supposed to be _ able _ , simply _ does _.)

Neither angel nor demon, of course, really knew how to raise a child: which meant that by age nine, Harry was drinking wine with every meal, conjuring whatever he needed out of thin air, and driving -- speeding, mostly -- around London as he pleased. He could also, they found, not only shapeshift, but _ fly _ , which promptly became his favourite mode of transportation when he could get away with it (and once Crowley showed him how to become invisible, he could _ always _get away with it).

So the years passed, and the anxious six-year-old Crowley had stolen became the lax, sauntering eleven-year-old that toasted with them at the Ritz and dusted the shelves at the bookshop and forged their signatures on the annual reports to Up- and Downstairs when one or both of them wasn't paying attention (it was a testament to bureaucracy that the reports were never looked very closely at, really). Harry cultivated an interest in alchemy and a near-snobbish connoisseurship of all things chocolate, treacle, or caramel; and thus were the three of them sitting around a table piled high with the latter when an owl of all things swooped in with a letter in its beak addressed to Harry, on his birthday in 1991.

'Mr. H. J. Potter, A.Z. Fell Books, London,' it read, when Harry had shooed the owl out of the shop and miracled the feathers out of the puddings. "Which of us is this supposed to be for?" he wondered aloud, flicking a little fireball at the wax seal to melt it away without burning the letter (one of his favorite tricks). "Do you think it's me? Ooh, this is parchment --"

He read the first line, and burst out laughing. "Crowley! Zira! You've _ got _ to read this -- look -- 'To Harry _ J Potter! _'" He flung the letter into Crowley's hands, cackling. "Don't you see what this means? MY NAME'S GOT A J IN IT!"

"Sweet Satan," Crowley choked, golden eyes glittering with mirth -- he'd long forgone his sunglasses indoors, at Harry's request, as they were 'wicked cool' -- "don't tell me you're going to go by --"

"HARRY J CROWLEY," Harry wheezed, clutching at his stomach where he rolled on the floor. "I've _ got _ to, it's clearly _ fate _ \--"

Eventually, when Aziraphale had emptied and refilled his wine (a Gewürztraminer he'd found himself recently fond of) and half-emptied it again, they'd gotten a hold of themselves well enough to read the rest of the letter.

"Boarding school," Harry mused, looking over the list. "Well, I can always miracle myself back here if I get bored, right?" He grinned at Aziraphale, who rolled his eyes in fond exasperation. "I guess I'll go, then, just for the _ hell _of it."

"Come on, kid," Crowley snorted, "that was _ terrible _ . You're going to have to try harder if you're living up to _ my _name."

Harry put on a thoughtful expression. "You're right. I can't have my jokes..._ fall _ flat."

_ "Even worse!" _

Mid-morning of August first, 1991, Draco Malfoy stepped out of Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions at his mother's heels and promptly spotted two wizards walking with complete nonchalance down Knockturn Alley -- or rather, one walked, and the other...sauntered? This wasn't particularly arresting, but what _ was _was the boy walking -- sauntering -- in between them, who led the way right into Borgin and Burkes like it was nothing.

Even _ Father _didn't just walk into Borgin and Burkes in broad daylight.

His mother hadn't noticed the source of his distraction, and only told him to 'close your mouth, Draco dear, it's unbecoming'.

An angel, a demon, and a wizard (technically) stared up at the bright red engine of the Hogwarts Express. "Why, they retired this model in '63," Aziraphale observed. "I suppose they're keeping it in shape with magic?"

"Not bad for just humans," Harry murmured, peering at it with some interest. He straightened up. "Well, I s'pose I should get on before it leaves? Be seeing you, Zira, Crowley."

And he sauntered onto the train, leaving just the two unearthly beings on the platform. Aziraphale shared a look with Crowley.

"Do you think he'll get up to any trouble before the train arrives at Hogwarts?"

"Absolutely," Crowley smirked. "He's a Crowley, after all."

Harry made his way down the train corridor, looking for an empty compartment. Or more accurately, picking at random a compartment he decided he liked and finding it miraculously available. The whole 'wizard' business certainly seemed fun, he thought, but it had been a long time since he'd interacted with anyone his age, and throwing 'magic' into the mix...he wasn't exactly _ nervous, _ that would be silly, but...

Anyways. He snapped his fingers to dress himself in the school robes he'd had to buy (apparently they were enchanted, and he didn't want to risk miracling a set without all the enchantments), fidgeting in the funny material. Wizarding fashion was silly, but so were togas when he'd given them a try; and Harry preferred to stick with the latest fashions than keep the same outfit for years on end. He draped himself over the seats, conjuring a fluffy pillow, and closed his eyes for a nap.

He was woken up by a loud voice -- "Hey, mind if I -- oh, sorry, you're sleeping? I'll just --"

"'m awake," Harry yawned. The novelty of his nap being interrupted was short-lived, but so was his annoyance in favor of interacting with this newcomer. His hair was red, but not Crowley red -- a bit brighter, with freckles, even. "May's well sit down, eh?"

The boy -- Ron Weasley, he introduced himself -- took some interest in a scar on Harry's forehead, and whined about dry sandwiches, and about his older brothers and his rat and his handed-down robes. Despite himself, Harry found he didn't mind the nosiness. It was refreshing, considering Aziraphale and Crowley hadn't been the nosy type. He miracled Ron's sandwich into a better one, with some chips and thin sliced pickles to boot, and handed the redhead a glass of Bordeaux that Crowley had been favoring lately (Harry liked his wine drier, but he wasn't going to complain). Ron took one sip and his face scrunched up like he'd bit a lemon; it was hilarious. "Have you got some pumpkin juice instead?" the boy asked.

Shortly after, Harry sampled four of everything from the snack trolley. If everything else was a bust, Harry would still come back to the wizarding world for the moving chocolates; that they had little trading cards inside was just a bonus, and the topic of the trading cards kept Ron talking for long enough about his collection that Harry could finish off his wine in relative peace and pour something else for the second glass.

That was when the compartment door burst open, and a blond boy barged in, about to say something, then stopped, seeing Ron in one of the seats. Apparently they didn't get along; Harry could see the tension in the room. He wasn't quite paying attention to their arguing, but both boys shut up when he yawned loudly and got the blond's attention.

He was promptly pointed at. "You're the one I saw in Knockturn Alley!"

"Have we met?" Harry ignored Ron's scandalized gasp in the background and extended a hand to the blond boy. He shook it. "Harry J Crowley, a pleasure."

"Draco Malfoy, likewise," said the blond, Draco, immediately.

"..._ Crowley? _" Harry glanced over to see a furrow in Ron's brow. "Don't you mean Potter?"

Draco did a spit-take of the wine Harry had just handed to him. (A glass of Aziraphale's favorite New Zealand white. Draco hadn't yet earned any French grapes.) _ "Harry Potter?" _

Meanwhile, Harry draped himself on the seat.

"Ah, right," he yawned, "'m s'posed to be Potter, aren't I...too bad, really. Crowley is a much cooler name, don't you think? In fact, just call me Crowley. Don't even bother with 'Harry'." He drained his glass and reached for another Chocolate Frog, picking off its caramel legs while it squirmed realistically in his hand.

In the end, despite Harry's private desire to see them get in a fight, the two wizards settled down in their allocated spaces in his compartment, sharing in the bounty of sweets. Being an outsider to much of the wizarding world, Harry let them go on about what they knew of magic so far, watching Ron attempt to demonstrate a color-changing spell on his pet rat, failing utterly to general amusement.

"I'll change it for you, Ron," Harry proclaimed, and snapped his fingers just as the compartment door opened again to reveal two more wizards (or was it a witch and a wizard?), one of whom was already asking something about a toad.

The rat turned bright yellow, including its eyes (Harry had managed to get them the same color as Crowley's, how cute), and Harry tossed it back to the redhead, oblivious to the sudden silence that had fallen upon the compartment.

"What?" he asked, finally. "Did you want your toad? Here --" he snapped his fingers again, and a toad dropped into the hands of the boy that had just shown up. "Oh, what is it? Quit looking at me like a jar of holy water --"

"How did you do that?" Draco breathed, eyes wide.

"I just thought you had a really dedicated house-elf or something," Ron muttered, staring at Harry with the same awe.

"Do what?" Harry didn't mind basking in their admiration, but he still liked to think he'd earned it. "And what's a house-elf?"

(Ron did not know what he had unleashed in one person in their compartment, as Hermione's brain parsed the concept of a 'house-elf' and what it might mean.)

"You _ don't _have a house-elf?" Ron realized, alarmed.

"Then...where have you been getting this wine from?" Draco eyed the bottles strewn about the compartment with a wrinkle in his brow.

"Little demonic miracle of my own," Harry answered immediately, swirling his glass until it filled with something new. He took a sip. "Ah, good, Chenin Blanc."

Apparently, conjuring things wasn't something wizards could do. Harry rolled his eyes at the wizards' insistence, giving an insouciant shrug. "Well, _ you _ can't. Just practice! It's _ easier than breathing." _

One enchanted boat sped across the Black Lake at triple its original velocity, jostling the other boats in its wake. Harry grinned into the wind, eyeing the approaching shoreline. Ron, Draco, and Hermione -- that was her name -- were shouting at him, holding on tightly to the edges of the boat.

"What can I say?" he grinned at them when they stepped onto solid ground again. "I'm a bit of a speed demon."

"Y-You go too fast for us, Crowley," Draco exclaimed, pale-faced.

Severus Snape was not expecting good things from this year's crop of first-years.

Bad enough that Harry Potter was _ sauntering _into the school like he owned the place.

Worse, Draco -- his dear godson -- was at his heels.

Even worse, Potter sorted Slytherin almost before the Hat touched his head.

MUCH WORSE, the boy promptly conjured food onto his plate from nowhere.

A prefect attempted to correct the use of a house-elf in Hogwarts. "A what -- oh, right, you can't do it," Potter nodded understandingly. "Here --"

And MUCH, MUCH WORSE, he proceeded to summon a feast for the _ entire table, _ replete with _ wine, _ which was supposed to be impossible, by the very _ wards of the school -- _

The Potions Master took a Calming Draught and a Headache Reliever out of their respective pockets in his sleeve. He would have a migraine by the end of the evening, he just knew it.

"It's Crowley, by the way," Harry announced to the table while they looked on in mixed degrees of awe. "Harry J Crowley."

"What's the J stand for?" Draco asked, at his left.

Harry faltered. "Uuh...just a J, really."

(Elsewhere, Crowley's ears itched. He smiled over his glass of champagne, feeling the urge to laugh maniacally that accompanied plenty of Crowley-isms.

"Oyster, dear?" Aziraphale asked, holding up the shell to his mouth.)

The faculty meeting was going well, until they got to the topic of one Harry J 'Crowley'.

"He's got an eye for Charms work," gushed Filius.

"His Transfigurations are extraordinary," Minerva agreed.

Pomona giggled. "He's been _ threatening _ my plants, Severus, and they're flourishing like nothing before!"

"I suppose his Potions practical work is...adequate," the Potions Master muttered sourly. (He still wasn't sure just _ how _ Potter -- blast it, _ Crowley _ \-- was getting relentlessly perfect results despite his poor form and technique in class, and there was no way he could _ prove _ it was impossible outright, nor accuse the boy of cheating...)

"Ah, but his written work is still quite average in comparison," Minerva pointed out to general agreement.

This was true: Harry didn't see the point of learning all these blasted _ rules _ and _ incantations. _ Why couldn't wizards just do what he did? But it's not all bad; Aziraphale liked books, and the library here had a lot _ of _ them, and Harry at least recognized several from the angel's collections at home that he'd read before and might find useful --

(_ Magick Moste Evile, _ in particular; Crowley had enjoyed reading it to him. Harry had giggled at the animated drawings and diagrams.)

Being a ghost, Professor Binns was not included in the faculty meeting, but if he had been, he would have possibly complained about Harry's disruptive behavior in class the first week, and his absence thereafter. He had heard different and better stories growing up, from his so-called guardians -- goblins, Crowley had insisted, weren't nearly as warlike before he got his hands in them -- but the Professor would hear none of it.

Professor Quirrell was...afraid of Harry Potter, loath as he was to admit it. The boy seemed unnaturally interested in, and entertained by, even the most basic dark arts.

("This is better than Crowley said it'd be! _ Imagine _all the hell you can raise with just a tripping jinx in the right place --!")

The Dark Lord seemed intrigued, however, when he mentioned young Harry. Indeed, he insisted that Quirrell _ call _him Crowley, instead of 'Mr. Potter'; "A name hasss itsss purpossesss, Quirinusss..."

Student Reports from the Slytherin Dungeons, First Term, 1991-2 School Year:

\- Crowley is yelling at a plant that he keeps by his bedside, Professor. It's shaking.

\- Crowley is staring into a mirror and holding a conversation. That would be normal, yes, but it's not an enchanted mirror.

\- Crowley is draping himself on the sofa by the fire again, Professor. It's supposed to hold five people. Only Crowley fits.

\- The aforementioned plant is, despite receiving no sun and barely any water, flourishing in its pot at Crowley's bedside. No one is sure what kind of plant it is.

\- Professor, Crowley is pouring everyone nightcaps out of thin air again. Half the House is hungover. How does he never seem to get drunk?

(The Head of House has informed his students that frivolous reports need not be submitted from this point onward.)

\- Professor, Crowley TURNED HIMSELF INTO A SNAKE SOMEONE HELP

(Update: Crowley turned back. He's an Animagus?)

\- Crowley appears to be a Metamorphmagus. (Reporting student was reminded that a non-emergency is considered frivolous.)

\- PROFESSOR, CROWLEY IS SPEAKING PARSELTONGUE--

("You mean all wizards _ can't _ speak to snakes? Sweet Satan -- I mean, what else can't you do?")

Snape's unsent report to Dumbledore, complaining about Potter's -- bugger all, _ Crowley's _ \-- behaviour, went on to outline his daily torment of:

\- Crowley in class

\- Crowley in the Great Hall _ drinking more wine than a single mother _ and barely eating anything except desserts *

\- Crowley sauntering into places where he doesn't belong and refusing to acknowledge that he doesn't belong there **

\- Crowley outright skipping History of Magic to sleep ***

\- Crowley _constantly poking at Snape's Occlumency with horribly subtle suggestions that he explore the third-floor corridor,_ to the extent that he actually DOES SO before he realizes he's been influenced into it, and then having the nerve to look smug whenever Snape demands he stop that ("A little temptation is only natural, Professor...")

* (Because he honestly believes he doesn't _ need _ to eat)

** (A Crowleyism that has worked for centuries to get the demon into the most exclusive of parties and was therefore foundational in his approach to parenting Harry)

*** ("Sleep is a luxury, Professor. Why wouldn't I indulge in a little sloth when I can?")

Against all odds, the student body had mostly managed to get used to Crowley's antics by the end of the first term. _Surely_, they all thought at some point or another, _this is as ridiculous as it gets._

Then the term's Leaving Feast was interrupted by the distant roar of an engine --

\-- and an entire Muggle (?) car appeared out of nowhere in the space between tables in the Great Hall, leaving flaming tire tracks behind.

It was chaos. Students leapt out of their seats, some to get away, others to get closer for a look; upper years had their wands drawn; the faculty rose in alarm from the Head Table, moving quickly to get line-of-sight on the possible threat.

Over the din, a single voice rang out, joyous. "YOU MADE IT!"

The driver's side door of the car, which some students recognized as a Bentley, opened to permit a man in a dashing black morning suit and top-hat to step out. He reached up and whipped the hat off so quickly it disappeared: a thick mane of read hair, deeper in color than the Weasley tint, erupted from its previous containment.

Harry (Crowley) leapt over the Slytherin table to reach the man in utter defiance of the laws of physics, his mad dash practically over the heads of the others coming to an abrupt halt in front of him. In the emergent silence of the Great Hall, everyone saw Harry clasp his hands behind his back and rock forward on his heels, expectantly, and laugh, "Crowley!"

"Crowley," the man greeted, booping Harry gently on the nose.

Harry snarked back at him in Parseltongue, still beaming. The man - Crowley - smirked and replied in kind.

"Oh Merlin, there's two of them," Draco groaned.

Harry and Crowley turned identical grins on the faculty table, then. A snap of his fingers and Harry was holding his trunk in one hand and a copy of Crowley's top-hat in the other. (Crowley had replaced his own hat sometime in the past minute. No one could really follow the speed of his costume changes.)

_"SO LONG, SUCKAHS,"_ Crowley yelled, leaping into the Bentley with Harry right behind him. The car door slammed shut with a 'bang', engine revving into an unearthly howl --

\-- and the Bentley was barrelling toward the Head Table, before it disappeared in a great gout of hellfire.

The shellshocked silence of the Great Hall that followed in its wake lasted only as long as it took for the first student to start clapping; then the crowd roared with applause, nearly as loud as the Bentley's engine had just been, and everyone returned to their seats to toast the last of the chaos for the term.

Only one Ravenclaw first-year was not participating in the festivities: she was currently having a minor crisis. Over the din, no one really noticed her voiced complaint: a soft-spoken, "you can't just Portkey into Hogwarts..."


	2. Chapter 2

While Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t put much stock in Christmas -- the Roman festivals had been _ much _ more exciting -- they, and Harry, certainly believed in presents. Still, when one has (in this case literally) ‘more money than God’, there wasn’t much fun to be had merely in _ receiving _ things.

(Though Harry made a point of buying himself one more thing than his unpleasant cousin each year, just out of spite.)

So when the three of them sat down at the Ritz about twenty minutes after the Bentley tore out of Hogwarts’ Great Hall, Harry took a long drink of celebratory champagne and produced a particular List, one he had been compiling all term. “Here’s my plan,” he began. 

“A great plan,” Crowley nodded along. “One might say…”

“...an ineffable one,” Aziraphale finished.

And the next day, they piled back in the car and drove far in wide in search of the perfect gift for each person on Harry’s list -- most of whom he liked, and just a few he didn’t.

(Driving to get there wasn’t _ strictly _ necessary, but Harry had missed doing 90 miles an hour in the middle of London and needed his fix.)

Lucius eyed his son speculatively from the head of the dining table. “Draco,” he inquired, “are you drinking wine at breakfast?”

His eleven-year-old son, taking an absent sip, replied without even looking up from his post. “It’s not just _ wine,_ Father, it’s a _ Chablis Grand Cru.” _

Had his son just… _ scoffed _ at him? The older Malfoy sat frozen, shocked to the core. Why, he never! Nearly a minute passed before he could speak, and even then, he nearly stammered. "I had no idea you knew so much about wine, my son.”

Draco condescended to look at him, then, one eyebrow slightly quirked. “Well, you have to,” he drawled, “living with Crowley.”

“The eccentric classmate of yours, Crowley?” Lucius had honestly thought the mentions of a ‘Crowley’ in his son’s letters home were some sort of in-joke among the boy’s yearmates. A sort of marginalia to the actual events in his life. It had sounded like a story, after all -- ‘and Crowley turned into a snake again, as per usual, and scared the Hufflepuffs’; ‘we found Crowley six stories up with a glass of Pinot Noir and a steak dinner, dangling over the edge of the windowsill’; ‘as energetic as Crowley when someone mentions the M25’...

“Yes, Harry J. Crowley, née Potter, that Crowley,” Draco sighed. “He’s insufferable about good food and wine, surely I’ve talked about him more than enough in my letters? Really, Father, this is a _ holiday _ from the constant chatter, do spare me.”

Lucius’ attention had snagged so sharply on the first part of that, that he didn’t even notice the sass he was getting. “I believe you have neglected to mention to me that this Crowley of yours was Harry Potter, in your letters.”

Draco cocked his head, thinking about it. “Well, no one _ calls _ him ‘Potter’, Father, it’s _ Crowley _, so I must have forgotten.”

Just then, the potted rosebush being used as a centerpiece on the table burst into flames. Lucius nearly spilled his tea. Draco barely glanced up at the still-burning bush until it called his name.

“...Crowley?” his son squeaked.

_ “Oh, it worked!” _ exclaimed the bush. _ “I _ ** _knew _ ** _ this grimoire was from Upstairs. You’re having breakfast, I suppose?” _

“Yes.” Draco glanced at Lucius. “Father is also here.”

_ “Oh, hello, Father,” _ said the bush.

“No, Crowley, _ my _ father, Lucius.”

A beat. _ “That makes rather more sense. Good morning, Lucius.” _

“...Good morning,” Lucius murmured, dazed. He took another sip of his tea, silently commanding a house-elf to add brandy to it.

“Did you need something, Crowley?” Draco wondered, poking at the bush with the end of his butter knife.

_ “Hm? Not at all. I mostly called to complain. Would you believe Aziraphale’s already _ ** _had_ ** _ the Teniotic wine I was going to give him for Christmas? Now I have no idea what to wrap.” _

“Good luck,” Draco offered. He glanced at Lucius and shrugged.

_ “Thanks, Draco! See you after hols.” _ And the bush crumbled into a pile of ash.

Lucius blinked at it. So did Draco. “That was weird,” the younger Malfoy observed. “Though not the weirdest thing Crowley’s done.”

“Do tell,” said Malfoy senior, and with a last swig of his Chablis, Draco did.

Excerpts from Lucius A. Malfoy’s dossier on one Harry J. Crowley nee Potter, begun December 22, 1991:

_ Not only a Parselmouth but an Animagus… annoys Severus to no end… _

(Which was perhaps why the man had never mentioned Crowley to Lucius in their regular letters--)

_ ...responsible for multiple incidents of mass alcohol poisoning ‘before anyone learned not to match Crowley drink-for-drink’... Draco has followed him into every House’s common room except Ravenclaw… _

“Crowley has too much fun trying to seduce the doorknocker into letting him through without answering any riddles,” Draco sighed. “I think it’s working.”

Lucius looked up from his notes, peering at him over his reading glasses. He’d paid more attention to his son in the past few hours than he had in the last ten years. “I find myself surprised you have not mentioned him rather more than you have, Draco, when Crowley seems to be one of your closest friends.”

Draco reached for another of the biscuits plated beside his chair in Lucius’ study. “Well, he is, but after a while you just… get used to it?” He swung his feet up, leaving room for a footstool to appear underneath. “His guardian, Crowley, seemed even worse, with the flaming Bentley and all.”

Lucius blinked. Then he finally gave in to the urge and summoned a bottle of reserve Firewhiskey, pouring himself a substantial glass, before daring to ask.

“What do you mean, a flaming Bentley?”

December 24th, 1991, two Beings were engaged in a terse discussion behind the privacy of wards Harry knew not to try and cross. The topic: what does one get the Harry that has everything?

The conclusion: a pet.

“Bloody hell, Crowley, that’s a huge snake!”

Harry glanced up from his plate at dinner the day after hols ended. The great black serpent coiling around his shoulders leveled its golden gaze on Blaise Zabini, then looked away, dismissing him. “What, Anthony? I’ve always had him. You’re all just unobservant.”

The upper-years, sitting further down the table, were decidedly rankled by this accusation, as they prided themselves on being very observant.

“If you say so, Crowley,” Draco shrugged from beside him. “What else did you do over hols?”

“Well,” Harry supposed, “I _ did _ make a bet with ‘Zira and Crowley about the Philosopher’s Stone…”

Over the remaining months, Harry split his time between classes, meals, naps, and the third-floor corridor. He’d tamed Fluffy the hellhound at the very beginning of the year, after he sauntered into the wrong room and refused to admit he’d gotten lost; now the creature was getting _ very _ ‘fluffy’ with all the dog treats he left it on his way down the trapdoor.

Despite its cool name, Devil’s Snare did nothing to hold Crowley when Harry tossed him down the hatch. The plant shrank into a corner as soon as Harry shouted at it -- and bloomed out of season, to Professor Sprout’s confusion, early in March.

Harry simply miracled open the lock on the key door: “What kind of idiot makes flying keys when the _ locks _ are the weak point?”

It was the chess pieces that proved the most interesting, in fact, and took up the most time. Harry spent two months sneaking down to chat with them, convincing the white pieces one-by-one to turn black, instead of fighting at all. The bishops were, naturally, the first to go; the pawns the most determined to fight for their dying ideals. The day the last pawn gave in to the trend, late in May, was an achievement Harry resolved to toast the next year.

He proceeded to burn the troll in hellfire -- Harry was good at hellfire, especially after the practice he’d gotten on Halloween -- and walk through the flames in the potion trial without even bothering to look at the bottles. “After riding in the Bentley,” he muttered to Crowley, “this ain’t nothin’.”

Seeing Quirrell on the other side was both a surprise and a disappointment, considering he’d been tempting Snape to steal the Stone ever since he’d heard about it (by conjuring too much whiskey for Hagrid while they watched the dragon egg one afternoon).

“Fancy seeing you here, Professor!” Harry greeted, waving at the turbaned wizard, who jumped. “I was just about to see this Stone for myself. Crowley and ‘Ziraphale bet me on who made it, you see. Upstairs or Down? Or neither, as is my bet-”

He snapped his fingers, and the Stone appeared in his palm; the Mirror clouded over. Quirrell’s eyelid twitched involuntarily.

“May I see that?” asked a muffled voice from somewhere in Quirrell’s direction. Harry was too busy examining the glittering red crystal to see who it was.

“Can you wait ‘till Aziraphale arrives to resolve my bet?” he asked, holding it up to the lamp-light. “Sweet Satan, why did they make it so dark in here anyway?” He waved a hand to brighten the torch flames.

Uncoiling from Harry’s arm, Crowley proceeded to Un-Snake, and rang Aziraphale at the bookshop. “Come on over,” he said.

Soundlessly, the angel appeared at Harry’s right side, and plucked the Stone out of his hand. “How quaint,” Aziraphale chuckled. “Let’s see… oh! Why, you were right, Harry, this was a human invention after all!”

“Really?” Harry and Crowley both raised their eyebrows in the same way.

“Damn,” Harry shrugged. “I thought it’d be crystallized angel’s blood.”

Crowley flickered the end of his forked tongue on the Stone. “Nope,” he shook his head. “Smells human. Wizard, but human.”

“All right, then,” Harry sighed. “Have at it, Professor.” He tossed it over to Quirrell.

_ “Yesss!” _ shouted the muffled voice. _ “The final piece in the ritual -- a new immortal body is mine!” _

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale blinked. “Is _ that _ what they say it does?”

The face on the back of Quirrell’s head -- and wasn’t _ that _ a cool idea? Harry had never tried being a face on the back of someone’s head! -- was clearly disappointed to learn that the Philosopher’s Stone wouldn’t be very useful in getting him a new body. The angel and demon commiserated with him on the annoyance of being discorporated. “It’s -- heh -- _ hell _ waiting for a new one from the lower-downs, isn’t it?” Crowley agreed, clapping Quirrell agreeably on the shoulder.

This was when they learned that the demon -- Voldemort, he’d introduced himself -- wasn’t from the unearthly planes at all. “Goodness,” Aziraphale gasped, “you mean you’ve been _ stuck?” _

“We’ve got to help him!” Harry exclaimed.

The four of them (five, if Quirrell counted separately) departed Hogwarts Castle in a burst of flame, leaving behind only a singed smell, faintly sulfuric, as evidence they’d ever been there in the first place. By the time Albus Dumbledore set foot in the room, an hour later, the doors to a particular bookshop in London were closed and locked, its occupants rummaging through the back room for research material.

The Ritz didn’t usually offer takeaway, but desperate times called for desperate measures.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A smol update as promised to my dear viewers ♤
> 
> I love how this, like the other updates I have lined up, has sat at 80% completion for a month before I even deign to look at it a second time
> 
> Some of my older fics will get updates this week.

Quite unaware of the wizarding media uproar caused by Harry 'Crowley' Potter's mysterious disappearance alongside the Hogwarts Defense professor (which no one who knew Crowley could truly take seriously, however many editorials in the  _ Prophet  _ they read), the Boy-Who-Lived, two immortals, and a quasi-immortal spent the first two months of summer in an ancient place beyond mortal eyes, deep underground where light dared not shine.

That is to say, they were in the back rooms of Aziraphale's bookshop, in the section where the angel stored grimoires, treatises, scrolls, and other written information about magic.

It was a treasure trove of knowledge to rival the magical side of the Library of Alexandria, claimed Voldemort (whose possession of Quirrell was going much better now that he'd promised the man a future afterward). Aziraphale was certain he'd seen mention of viable resurrection rituals in his collection. Ones that didn't involve being discorporated and re-corporated as separate steps, ideally.

Voldemort described discorporation as 'much like astral projection' to Harry, which prompted Harry to try it - for all of ten seconds, during which he screamed in terrible agony and everyone agreed it wasn't worth trying again. Aziraphale supposed it was because of how they, being (approximate) mortals, were tied to their corporeal forms a bit more than he and Crowley were.

It was Harry's birthday, coincidentally, several days into his and Crowley's latest nap - "how  _ do  _ they do that," Voldemort muttered - that the angel and the wraith finally settled on a good ritual cobbled together from mentions in several of Aziraphale's ancient Mesopotamian tablets and a grimoire in French that Voldemort had only ever gotten to read in translation. Their mutual enthusiasm - and a cross-reference with a  _ Necronomicon  _ that the angel had forgotten he still owned - had them shaking Harry and Crowley awake late in the evening of the thirty-first to head to a graveyard in Little Hangleton that Voldemort wanted to use for the setting.

(The original ritual Voldemort had in mind had been discounted as 'overkill' and 'too dependent on ties to the earthly planes', but no one would fault the wraith for wanting the graveyard’s aesthetic.)

Ultimately, the resurrection took about two hours, half of which was preparation, and had a compelling musical accompaniment if anyone asked Harry, which they didn't. Quirrell vowed secrecy and left, appearing quite terrified of Voldemort for some reason.

("Be not afraid," Aziraphale giggled.)

Voldemort seemed a bit shocked at his own appearance, too; he spent a while staring into one of Crowley's mirrors when they'd returned to London, running his hands over his face and scalp and muttering to himself.

"I didn't think I'd be so  _ pretty  _ again," the now-wizard finally complained, testing out several hairstyles with a combination of wandwork and Crowley's shaving kit. "I got used to looking like a snake, before."

"You've still got snake eyes, at least," Harry attempted to console him.

Crowley, sensing opportunity, passed the wizard a pair of sunglasses.

Over August, Voldemort took it upon himself to teach Harry as much about the magical world as he could - the things that Crowley and Aziraphale had no use knowing, like inheritance law and magical theory and various forms of ritual work that were too tricky to miracle into being on the fly. Harry in turn taught Voldemort the finger points of living as a Crowley, which had a bumpy start until Harry explained the trick to un-imbibing all the liquor.

And one particular day late in August, while Voldemort brought Harry to Diagon for school shopping and then Knockturn for leisure, angel and demon convened on the matter of the wizard’s ‘true name’, the one he’d used in the resurrection ritual.

“Does ‘Tom Marvolo Riddle’ ring a bell for you, Crowley?” Aziraphale called across the backroom, leafing through a binder of collected reports to Above and Below from before Harry started writing them.

“Eh.. kind of?” the demon muttered, flipping pages seemingly at random from another such binder until his eyes caught on a line of text from 1943 and he choked. “A-Angel! Look at this!”

Aziraphale looked.

“..Oh, dear.”

“‘..in search of an Antichrist offspring of Tom Riddle, b. 1926, to facilitate Armageddon,’” the angel read aloud from the blurred, already-fading typewritten news sent from Down Below that Crowley must have archived without fully reading through. “‘Apparent death, 1943, Horsemen recalled, war resolved itself…’ Crowley, do you see what this means?”

They looked at each other.

“We were  _ right,” _ Aziraphale giggled, covering his face in his hands. “It  _ was _ the end!”

Hours later, they took Voldemort aside to confront him on the matter. “That would have been the year I split my soul for the first time,” he observed. “What is this about an Antichrist, though?”

Apparently, compared with unsubstantiated theories about ‘love potion’, Satan possessing Riddle Senior and knocking up the first willing woman made a lot more sense. Some of the details were fuzzy - why, for example, had no one known about Voldemort? - but as it stood, the would-be-Antichrist had crossed himself off the books by making a Horcrux and registered as ‘dead’ to however Below kept track of that.

“More than one, in fact,” Voldemort went on, looking quite proud of himself. Aziraphale and Crowley shared a look.

Wizards’ magic, they decided over dinner for two at a fine new establishment from the previous century, was entirely screwy, and not to be trifled with, and it was a wonder they hadn’t destroyed the world all on their own.

“Doesn’t explain Harry all that well, though,” Crowley said, quietly miracling the nearest patron’s wallet to the floor underneath someone else’s chair. “He’s just as capable as either of us, and even Voldemort doesn’t have that.”

A few tables away, someone flinched.

“Best we not look too closely at it,” the angel decided for them both. The devil was in the details, as they say, and Aziraphale had long decided he preferred Their Sort of magic to wizards’. It would be awful to jinx it somehow by being too curious.

Crowley heartily concluded it was “osmosis” from “miracling ‘im too much” and changed the subject to gossip from the next street over.

Which left  _ four _ individuals of particular talents on the planet, only two of whom were technically answering to anyone - three years earlier, when Harry’s forged reports received no notice, both angel and demon began sending in blank ones.

Who, then, would appear on the platform this term?

Not one (Anthony J) Crowley.

Not two (Anthony J and Harry J) Crowleys.

But  _ three _ Crowleys - Harry and Crowley and a very handsome man in matching sunglasses, whom Harry’s friends watching from their window gawked to see.

“Figures,” Draco snorted. “You can totally see where Crowley gets his sense of fashion from.”

They were all three of them wearing close-fitted black suits and sunglasses. (Crowley’s wardrobe was contagious.)

Harry’s friends accosted him within minutes of him getting on the train, asking all sorts of inane questions like ‘where have you  _ been, _ Crowley?’ and ‘why didn’t you write to us, Crowley?’ and ‘didn’t you get our letters, Crowley?’

“Is  _ that _ what all those owls were doing?” Harry blinked. “I thought Crowley was pranking me.” He’d miracled the flock of birds back to their roosts before any of them could interrupt his and Voldemort’s shopping trip. (Now he understood why the wizard had been so amused.)

“Well, how  _ was _ your summer, then,” Blaise drawled. “Beachside vacation? World travel? Zen retreat into the mountains?”

“Mostly sleeping, or hanging around in the back of the bookshop,” Harry shrugged. “We helped save this poor bastard on the back of Quirrell’s head, can you believe he was without a body for an entire decade?”

Draco went very white. “Crowley. What did you just say?”

“That we saved the discorporated fellow who’d attached himself to the back of Quirrell’s head, stuck as a wandering spirit since ‘81? Oh, it must have been  _ awful! _ Too bad Quirrell ran off after like he’d seen a ghost-”

The compartment had gone very quiet, with the others playing a game of ‘not-it’ while Harry waxed poetic about long hours studying the Necronomicon (though he politely left out the property damage from practicing at the local morgue). Finally, Hermione sighed, put her face in her hands, and interrupted him to ask, “Was this person named ‘Voldemort’?”

She and everyone flinched, except Harry, who shrugged. “Yeah, why?”

They blinked at him.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

No one, they all learned, had ever told Harry  _ why _ he was famous. He had assumed it was part and parcel of being a Crowley - flash bastards, etc, etc.

And while Harry was generally aware his parents had been killed by a Dark Lord-

“You mean he isn’t actually  _ called _ ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ or ‘You-Know-Who’?”

“No, Harry, why would you think that-”

“You can’t bloody blame me if no one  _ calls him by his name!” _ And how was he to know that it wasn’t a real name for a wizard? Fancy titles were exactly the type of shit demons went for; how was he to know wizards didn’t do the same?

He sat, pensive, for the rest of the train trip to Hogwarts; was uncharacteristically quiet in the Great Hall; even refrained from conjuring dinner early that year, just like Draco had begged him not to beforehand.

Midway through the Welcoming Feast, however, Harry suddenly blinked and sat up straighter, then stood up from the table with a shout. “ALL RIGHT!”

Everyone, even the first years, went quiet.

“I’ve decided,” Harry announced, “I’m not mad about it.”

And he sat back down.

Muttering broke out among the student body, speculation on what ‘the’ Crowley was on about this time. Those who knew, kept their mouths shut.

Snape closed his eyes in consternation, pulling a second headache reliever from his sleeve. Time spent within hearing distance of Gilderoy Lockhart had worn him down too much to bother assigning Crowley detention for the outburst. He could only hope for prompt replenishment of his liquor cabinet in the days to come.

Harry’s reasoning, as he would at some point explain to someone (Draco) who asked, went something like this:

Sure, Voldemort had killed his biological parents, but. Wizards are mortal, and their deaths were inevitable if you thought about it. And Harry wasn’t exactly a wizard, but they would have been, and they probably wouldn’t have liked that much.

Moreover, Crowley and Aziraphale were bloody awesome, and he wouldn’t trade them for anything, not least because ‘anything’ is perfectly attainable on its own without bargaining.

And Voldemort had had ten years as a wraith to repent, and the ten seconds Harry had managed were the  _ worst, _ so really hadn’t he suffered enough?

These were the conclusions he’d drawn on the Express; the whole ‘quiet contemplation’ bit had been him reaching out to ask the opinion of Crowley, first, who’d shrugged and sent him along to Aziraphale for life advice - as if Harry hadn’t planned on doing that anyway, as he would prefer not to have a Principality angry at him for his decision.

_ So long as you’re happy, Harry, dear, _ Aziraphale had advised him, with a little mental pat on the shoulder.

And if worst came to worst and Voldemort decided he wasn’t sufficiently grateful to Harry for helping him, and would rather discorporate Harry, they’d just shred him to bits with hellfire and holy water and whatever else, and then he’d be proper dead.

So Harry conjured up a tankard of honey mead for his roast beef and let it go.

(And completely failed to notice the look Albus Dumbledore was giving him from the Head Table.)


End file.
